I have ridden horses before. They’re swift, terrifying creatures, and while I attempted to maintain a dignified posture befitting of my stature as Someone Who’s Technically From Texas, it was pretty obvious that I was mostly hanging on for dear life. Apparently, though, in addition to the ability to fell dragons with the gentlest of whispers, the Dragonborn will soon be capable of fighting from the back of a horse. Like, without careening off its back in a blur of blood, bones, and white hot terror. That, I believe, is the mark of a true hero.

Bethesda announced the upcoming update in a blog post. There’s also a host of tweaks and bug fixes (no more, er, crashing when you try to load your game – hooray!), but horses are – as ever – the main event of this particular rodeo. Both melee and ranged combat will be possible from atop your prancing pony (not the inn, unfortunately), and it’ll all be completely free.

You can even try it out a Steam Beta Update right now if you’d like. Alternatively, you can check out the results of Bethesda’ Skyrim game jam to get a brief glimpse of what your’e in for. Sadly, however, dragon mounts still aren’t on the docket. Also, where’s my skeletal butler complete with adorable chef hat? And what about giant mudcrabs? I mean, Bethesda has all the ingredients for mounted monocle-wearing mudcrab jousting right in front of it. Why haven’t Todd Howard and co tossed them in a bowl, stirred, and created the new Sport of Kings? Truly, it boggles the mind.

Seriously. I couldn’t believe that they’d even bothered to include horses again when the first time I saw one, I had to watch some idiot climb down off it again in order to fight. It rendered them completely pointless.

You can already run, and there’s fast travel for getting around quickly, which has the benefit of not making the world seem so weirdly scaled. It’s not worth having a horse when you spend every encounter having to trap anything that chases you behind a rock so you can get down and fight it before it kills your horse.

@phantoon: Except that none of that actually works in the Skyrim that I played. Did you mod it, or did one of the patches make a major change to travel? Because when I played it at launch, you could neither run nor use fast travel when encumbered. You could, however, ride a horse.

Yes! It makes me incredibly happy that Bethesda is putting out free content like this; and that it’s actually new gameplay features rather than just an extra dungeon or hat. I’m very excited for the changes that will come with whatever the hell Dawnguard is, and all this happy is enough to make the quietly burning rage at TES Online simmer down a bit.

I poured 150 hours into the game, I do not remember seriously using a horse once. I only tried a horse for testing purposes. I see very little use for them. They do not have saddlebags to store my loot and they feel very cumbersome and slow. And I do not need them to give me an advantage in battle either.

Wait, what? Are you arguing against the entire point of Elder Scrolls games on the PC? That modding is somehow bad? You’re extrapolating that because he mentioned a mod, he was using it, or something. I don’t know. So I’m doing the same. I think.

I poured 150 hours into the game, I do not remember seriously using a sword once. I only tried a sword for testing purposes. I see very little use for them. They do not have serrated edges to cut my bread and they feel very cumbersome and slow. And I do not need them to give me an advantage in battle either.

I said the same thing for a long time (I played Oblivion the same way, only using a horse when the dark brotherhood gave me one for free), but it’s really crazy how much faster you travel on a horse. Especially when running. Stick to the roads on a horse and you can get to new towns/dungeons in no time. I’m definitely a convert. The only downside is that I have to walk past all of those delicious alchemy ingredients I see by the side of the road, because mounting and dismounting takes so long.

I’m pretty excited about being able to kill the things that attack me on the road without having to get off of my horse first, and I hope they also add in some way to grab nearby alchemy ingredients from horseback too.

This is great news. Both for the fun we’ll all have Mount ‘n’ Blading our way across Skyrim, but also because its a great sign of goodwill from Bethesda. I look forward to what lies in store for the future.

If you could choose a mod for Bethesda to make an official version of, which would it be?

For me personally I’d really be happy if they could make all the cities part of the world-map. So you can enter them with no load screens. If this was done by the people that made the game. I presume they would know all the scripted events that would need updating to accommodate this without causing further bugs….well at least not too many. :)

If you waited awhile for the GOTY edition you would end having all these new features and enchantments from the start and would most likely have a much better experience than someone that bought it at launch.

I’m aware of that, but there are also a diminishing number of titles that I don’t want to wait a year to play. Batman AC, for example, – so much paid-for content obviously in the pipeline from before the game’s release there’s very little incentive to splash the cash at launch.

when they say mounted combat they clearly just mean you can finally swing a bloody weapon from horseback in a sandbox game like assassins creed offered us 3 years ago. This should have been in when it shipped.

Or hey, Zelda had it back 1998 so ALL games since should have it. Just about all devs have problems when comparing the ‘things we want to put in the game’ list and ‘time we have until we have to put the game out’ list. There’s always stuff developers want in but don’t have time to implement before release. At least this has been put in, for free, rather than being kept back for part of a paid for DLC or expansion (or sequel) . So hooray!

Man, I want the spears! And giant mudcrabs! And werebears! This is a nice start, but dunno if I’ll be bothered to touch Skyrim again with this little incentive. The 150 hours poured into it is quite enough for quite some time. Ruined quite a bit of my life that time…

Spell combos and those nifty water shaders next, please! (surface flow and underwater)
I’m assuming the moving platforms in dungeons will be in for the DLC. Would be silly not to. Also the water currents. I can just see the zelda-style water temple now…

This could be very interesting, but knowing the engine I’m afraid that mounted warfare will come down to who gets stuck on the world geometry first. Mount and Blade is stellar when you have open fields but fighting in a wood or on a cliffside is an exercise in frustration.

Still, Bethsoft should be applauded for their support of the game and I can’t sniff at a freebie, however it turns out in the end.

I remember always wanting games to have horseback combat. Then I played Mountain Blade (or whatever it was called) and I found that it consist mostly of riding in circles hoping to score a hit at the next pass. Thus disillusioned, I never blamed Skyrim for not including mounted combat.